ELIZABETH — Police charged an Elizabeth man late Friday night in the killing of his wife, who had been dead several days before her body was found, said authorities.

It was the first homicide in Union County in 2012, authorities said.

Early Friday, police came to the apartment building on Parker Road, where the woman’s body was found lying in a vestibule, said Union County First Assistant Prosecutor Albert Cernadas Jr.

The woman, Thya Wilson, 45, had been killed several days earlier, he said, and an autopsy showed she had died from blunt force trauma.

Her husband, Reco Parks, 47, was charged last night with first-degree murder and is being held on $1.5 million bail in the Union County Jail, said Cernadas.

Parks also lived in the apartment, authorities said.

Detectives from the Union County Homicide Task Force searched her apartment and her car, which was parked nearby, and found she had been killed inside her second-floor apartment and later moved, said Cernadas.